SELECTED REVIEWS
ART THAT INVITES YOU TO TOUCH AND BE TOUCHED
It is easy to come close to Monika Larsen Dennis' art. Especially
to her sculptures that invite you to touch them. Right now there
is a large exhibit with her sculptures and photographs at Millesgården
i Stockholm, together with paintings by Marc Chagall.

I meet Monika Larsen Dennis at the Zinc Gallery on Skeppargatan
in Stockholm. She is showing new sculptures in white marble and
photographs. The later shows details from famous historic paintings.
Like the photo Handling from the Painting Series, that
shows a woman’s hand resting over her thigh. The detail
is taken from Edouard Manet's famous and scandalous painting "Olympia“
from 1863. The painting that hangs at the dÓrsay Museum
in Paris shows a naked woman lying with her hand on her thigh
and a black woman that hands out a bouquet of flowers.

In Monika Larsen Dennis picture she has concentrated on the hand.
A gesture that in its puzzling way both invites and rejects. Like
in relations between people. Come closer, Don’t come closer!
Or as she herself has expressed it in a earlier art piece
Round and Round made together with Maria Freiberg: “...but
I thought, you always say that, I didn’t mean it like that,
how could you, I told you so, I never said that, you promised,
why didn’t you say something, now you’re telling me,
that’s not what I said, you don’t understand...“

In close encounter with sculpture
Her latest sculptures in white marble are embodying similar questions.
Sculptures that are a kind of negative prints, where the actual
sculpture is that which has been taken away. Like in the one named
the Hug from the Marble Series. In one large piece of
marble she has carved in a channel that ends in two holes at the
long side. When the viewer, if he or she dares, sticks his/her
hands and then the arms into the holes the hands and the arms
meet in a gesture like an embracement of another body. A sudden
meeting that can be both hard and soft, cold or warm. As in relationships
between people. Another sculpture, also in creamy white marble,
are made so that the viewer can fall down on his knees to rest
his chin and forehead in a position as in prayer. At the same
time there is the danger of sliding into the marble, as in relationships
between people.

In yet another sculpture she lets two spike mats meet at the floor.
The spikes are just sharp enough so that two people can stand
on them barefoot facing each other for only few seconds, but only
if you get up with both feet at the same time and in that way
spread one's weight. Monika Larsen Dennis places her hands on
the spikes and claims that it could be possible...if you are good
at turning off your emotions... like the fakirs. Long way to
art practice
Monika Larsen Dennis was born in 1963 in Malmö, Sweden. She
has been involved in art most of her life, but it took long time
before she made her first appearance. First she traveled around
southern Europe and the USA and when she applied to the art school
in Malmö
she didn’t get in. So she studied in Iceland instead. A
time that she experienced as "incredibly
instructive.“ Then she attended the Art Academy in Stockholm
and left there in 1997. She has participated in several group
exhibits, among them together with Maria Friberg when they showed
an enormous video against the wall of the Culture House in Stockholm
in 1998/99. The title of the work was Driven and it showed
two bodies that embraced, struggled or danced with each other
in a film sequence that was only 7 seconds in real time, but had
been extended to a 2.5 minute slow motion loop.

For Monika Larsen Dennis the piece was showing a relationship
that had been distilled into pure essence, about weakness, strength,
aggression, passion and sexuality.

And now we can take part in an exhibition of Monika Larsen Dennis
investigations of human relations and gestures at Millesgården
till the 25 of February 2001.

Konstvärlden
& Dísajn Nr. 6 2000
by Göran Hellström

DOUBLE CODES
Central in Monika Larsen Dennis whole production is that of the duality
of the relationship, its eternal pendulum between trust and suspicion,
affection and aggression, longing for freedom and captivity.
I get very frustrated when it says “do not touch” beside a
sculpture. Because the experience just will not be complete without contact.
Honestly, it is not often I amenably meet such a request. The alarm may
go or not. Monika Larsen Dennis’ sculptures at Zinc Gallery not
only allow you touch them, they invite your touch. Yes, it is more than
that: it is when you first touch them that they become fully meaningful.
Without the viewers active participation Larsen Dennis’ sculptures
stay in a sort of pupated esthetic state.

A few meters up on the wall sits a soft polished block of white marble.
From the block two keyhole-shaped openings have been carved. The whole
thing looks like an abstract sculpture made in a classical material. But
the title Handcuffs opens up for another, more loaded interpretation.
The form is not just form, it also has a literal “captivating”
function. Bondage is not my thing, but I accept the challenge and place
myself with my back against the wall, pull my arms up and place my wrists
into the openings of the marble block. The edges of the handcuffs are
not sharp but softly rounded and I can get loose whenever I want. Nevertheless
a strong feeling of defenselessness and exposure appears. I am bound (maybe
voluntarily) and at the same time totally deserted. It hits me what a
strong picture this is of the sort of “bondage” we call love.
Deliciously smooth it binds us with its soft rounded irons. The stronger
it is, the more defenseless we become. Am I free to go? Maybe so. I am
nevertheless at the mercy of a force as fettering as handcuffs of steel.

Spell strikes a theme central to the whole production of Monika
Larsen Dennis, the close relation, the duality of the relationship, its
eternal pendulum between trust and suspicion, affection and aggression,
longing for freedom and captivity. Knuckle-duster is a knuckle-duster
in fine-polished white marble: At the same time a tool for maltreatment
and a beautiful instrument to both caress and be caressed with. The marble
effectively underlines this duality. Warm and cold, smooth and hard it
creates an interesting tension between “high” classicism and
“low” triviality, between form and context, esthetics and
thematic, art and use. Sometimes the ambiguity is also spiced with a sort
of burlesque contemptuous humor. A wall sculpture (also in marble, without
a title) looks both like a scrotum with an erected penis and a fist with
the middle finger straight up in the air. Up yours!

CURIOUS MULTI ARTIST
VISUALISES THE INVISIBLE My art is an investigative, continuing, process where
I can interest myself with what is most important to me at the time and
at the same time express it. "An exciting journey based on curiosity,"
says Monika Larsen Dennis, sculpture and multi artist, as we meet in the
beautiful Kasper Sahlin-priced exhibit hall, Millesgarden, in Stockholm.

Here in the lightest part of the hall she shows a selection of her latest
creations: Artwork carved in marble and black granite or cast in sandblasted
glass and metal together with a suite of photographs. The first artwork
I notice is titled Reconsidering Choice, a soft-surfaced marble
piece with sculpted depressions for the knees, chin and forehead. Like
a prayers bench it lures you to contemplate. Maybe even forgive?

Beside it is Armor, two body socks that are connected and stand
in front of each other, made of 230,000 small metal rings. As Tool
for Endless Longing: a massive desk in black granite, creates an
effective contrast to the pile of almond-oiled double ears in sandblasted
glass that lie on top. For a moment it looks like the ears are lifting
like butterflies. This is an example of the avskalade art, concrete and
spiritual, that seems to be the signum of Monika Larsen Dennis. It lures
you to touch - and to interpret.

She describes it herself as she in her work, "buzzes around invisible
areas of mental complications.“ About such things that relate to
meetings, relationships, trust, body language and lyhördhet. Therefore
the double ears on the black granite desk. For isn´t it easier to
distinguish undertones-subtle unspoken nuances- in what someone says,
than to discover the same in writing?

- My sculptures attempt to visualize these mental complications that we
nearly all live with in smaller or larger doses, she says, when after
leaving the exhibit hall, our talk continues in the nearby privacy that
Anna Milles room at the Millesgarden offers.The viewers active presence
are also one, but only one layer of many, that is the meaning of her art.

- It is a possibility. But there is never just one meaning with my work.
There is many levels. But when it comes to sculpture I have always wanted
it to be touched, says Monika Larsen Dennis, that in her on personality
strives after to „develop both the emotional and the intellectual
sides“ Besides a strong presence and verbosity she is also stubborn
and focused.

- My father showed me every second of my childhood that nothing is impossible.
That has had a tremendous impact on me. When people say, "that is
not possible,“ it´s not in my vocabulary.
Born in 1963 in Malmö with „an extremely playful childhood“
and where the danish born father stood for the emotional and the mother
for the intellectual, it still took quite a while for her to decide to
fully work with art. After as a 29 year-old have started at the art school
in Reykjavik 1992-94 and after that filled in with three years at the
Art Academy in Stockholm, she have now gotten a bit on the road on the
trip she sees her art as.

In only a few years Monika Larsen Dennis has established herself as one
of our most noticed young artists, both in Sweden and abroad. Last year
she among other things participated at Wanas sculpturpark - with hailshot
trees - while she at Zinc Gallery in Stockholm and Gavle showed sculptures
in marble, stainless steel and photographs.

Until today's date, she has had four separate exhibits and participated
in a large number of group exhibits. She is also represented in Lund,
Kristianstad, Stockholm and Luxemburg. It would not surprise her if her
work in the near future will be in Berlin. Because between Berlin and
Stockholm she now commutes since she met a German man.

My future dream is to develop the meeting with him. Something that can
change me and open me up for new creative possibilities.

INTIMATE BEAUTIFUL
PRINCESS MEETS THE PAINFUL.
Monika Larsen Dennis’ art peels the emotions off your skin. In her
art, lust and pain are two sides of the same coin. And the naked is not
only sensual, but also full of fear and worries.

Everything is sooo clean, sometimes I think of commercials for hair products
when I see Monika Larsen Dennis work: smooth, pale, female bodies in harmony
on white sheets; naturally beautiful skin, expressive hands that show
life and emotions; touch, closeness, milk white marble and a faint haze
on the surface like the trace of a fresh breath. Soft value, I’m
thinking of. And then, when the other danger appears it is like in the
fairytale: Snow White and jet black; heart and pain; freedom and captivity;
cream-white sleepy princesses and silver crowns with knife sharp edges.

In Monika Larsen Dennis’ art, sensuality and violence stand right
next to each other. In contrast to Cindy Sherman, who also uses her own
body, when she, in different ways, stages the subject and the sexuality,
with art historic, popular culture and image rhetoric references, the
viewer does not become a you for Monika Larsen Dennis. Here is another
dialog, without looks. It is more about intimacy than reconstruction.
Consequently, it’s not about what you hide behind, but revealing
yourself completely, to really show yourself.

Here, Monika Larsen Dennis has something in common with Louise Bourgeois
and her symbolic, expressive riddles. One big difference though: Monika
Larsen Dennis works in a highly impersonal and out-distanced way, with
cold colors and materials without real presence. Rather, here are traces
of stripped, classical form clean and shallow, graphical design language.

But even if it is undressed to its purest, most simple idea right next
to the skin, it is still the mutual, emotionally loaded, complicated,
painful and pleasurable relationship that is central. That between the
subject and the object. Between the body and the objects, between the
I and it’s mirror reflection, between the softly formless and the
knife sharp, aggressively hard. Maybe most of everything, the relationship
between two individuals, where all is blended. It becomes stories of a
we, about them or about us. Loneliness is far away, it is not that which
scares, but rather the relationship. It is that which is between two,
that which makes you throw yourself between the poles of fear and pleasure.

And even the hard, sharp is in Monika Larsen Dennis: clinical sparkling
spike mats, a shining dagger, edgy handcuffs without locks in shiny steel
against white walls, and tables with even edges and perfect surfaces.
Glass, steel, marble, photography, edges, torture and kisses: there is
always a duality that makes the beautiful, fragile and naked full of tension.

Matter can be both materials and things that you care about. Monika Larsen
Dennis always makes the urgent obvious. She gives ambiguous feelings an
image, shape, course of events and substance. It’s endlessly difficult:
her world is magical.

In Hands (7) the clenched fists are filled with bitterness, fear,
belief, agony, peace and strength. In the Dinner sits the suspiciousness
and affection with compressed palms and squeezed fingers across from each
other under isolated glass-covers at the dinner table. The difference
between the two hands is how hard the squeeze, how close the hands are
together. The closer, the more fear in the fingertips. But never in Monika
Larsen Dennis images, does anyone take the others hand, and hold it cautiously.

One of her best works has been shown many times before, the video Driven
from 1998. Here sometimes hugs, sometimes fight and alternately dances
to suit dressed persons. They frustratingly pulls each others black suits,
squeeze the arms, takes steady grips around the waists, try all the time
to get close and at the same time pull and escape from there. It is a
power game filled with passion, fear, love and hate. Both are forcing
and tempting the other to continue the eternal battle.

Or take a Long Kiss Goodbye; the petting wallpaper where the
nearness and the feelings in the end get blurred and vague. One kiss loses
the contour and disappears beyond time and space; its tension is smeared
out in the movement and fades away. Fast, fierce cuts, as if to catch
a course of events that slide out of your hands. There is a fury in the
will to grip the emotion. At last in the obscure mirror on the wall you
disappear, dissolve to a shadow that floats into the white. And you get
to grope about in the dark about that image too, try to give your own
feelings other expressions.
That is even harder.

In the piece Armor, are those of small metal rings meticulously
put together dresses heavy but see-through armors. Even the naked must
protect them selves, everything is highly dangerous.